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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28886472">constellations</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/castelia/pseuds/castelia'>castelia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Once Upon a Time (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:34:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,844</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28886472</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/castelia/pseuds/castelia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You are: a fairy without wings, a girl without a purpose, a believer no one believes in anymore. You are lost, so your destination for chosen exile is only fitting. [Tink considers stars, scars and life in Neverland.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Baelfire | Neal Cassidy &amp; Tinker Bell, Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Tinker Bell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>constellations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">You are: a fairy without wings, a girl without a purpose, a believer no one believes in anymore.</p><p class="p1">You are Tinker Bell, and you are lost, so your destination for chosen exile is only fitting.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><em>Chosen</em> is a strong word. Yes, Tink chose to help a despairing woman find true love, or tried to. But how could she have known the woman she thought was her friend had a blackening heart locked on revenge? How was she supposed to know a lion tattoo wouldn’t sate the woman’s lust for suffering?</p><p class="p1">All Tink saw was the dark circles under her eyes, the accidental (but was it really) fall off the balcony, the free access to silks and embroidered pillows that did nothing to put a smile on her face.</p><p class="p1">Tink was a fairy. Had been training under Blue to give people happy endings, to fulfill their need for— “Love,” Tink told Regina, smiling brightly. “You need love.”</p><p class="p1">Regina, Tink thinks darkly in the hot, treacherous jungle, needs a knife in her throat. The one she sleeps next to will do quite nicely, should the witch be stupid enough to show her face around Tinker Bell again.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">That’s the thing about fairies. They exist to grant other people their happy ending.</p><p class="p1"><em>Love</em>, Tink’s past self would tell her now, voice urgent. <em>You need love</em>.</p><p class="p1">But Tink’s past self was naive and blind to how cruel the world could be.</p><p class="p1">(Tink’s past self had magic.)</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“A sextant?” she repeats, nose scrunching up.</p><p class="p1">“Aye, it has quite the unfortunate name,” Hook agrees wryly. They lie side by side in the treehouse Tink has fashioned for a—</p><p class="p1">Not a home. Never that. Just a place to keep surviving.</p><p class="p1">“We sailors use it navigate,” he continues.</p><p class="p1">“Using the constellations?” Tink asks, the subject that has spurred this conversation: the fact that the stars in Neverland don’t look a thing like they did in the Enchanted Forest. “Handy, that.”</p><p class="p1">“Indeed.”</p><p class="p1">They don’t talk after that, continuing the sloppy kisses that they stopped for a moment to talk about the night sky.</p><p class="p1">The knife she sleeps in close proximity to in case of an attack, the knife she plans to jam into the soft flesh of Regina’s neck should she ever get the chance, has been held to the throat of the man lying next to her.</p><p class="p1">His blue eyes pierce through when she pulls away, hair mussed, lips quirked upwards. He really is quite pretty, not that she’ll ever call him that to his face.</p><p class="p1">There’s no love between them, but as the years pass, the initial tension has grown into a mutually beneficial arrangement.</p><p class="p1"><em>It’s better</em>, Tink thinks harshly to shut up an old, idealistic part of herself that hasn’t quite died yet.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">She can’t see the same stars in Neverland, can’t find familiar shapes in them.</p><p class="p1">(Blue taught her constellations in-between strict magic lessons. She still called her Green during these small, happy moments, but that didn’t really matter, the moments too precious for her to care.)</p><p class="p1">It makes her glad she has left the Enchanted Forest, glad she’s not in a place where she cares that people choose revenge over true happiness. She can’t even fault Regina for that anymore. Tink, too, dreams of revenge, dreams of making the reason her magic and home are gone pay.</p><p class="p1">(It makes her homesick.)</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">There’s a boy on the island. Lost in no way that matters, because he’s doing what no boy before him has done before: he evades Peter Pan.</p><p class="p1">He is lost, but he is not a Lost Boy.</p><p class="p1">Tink, on the other hand, has all but surrendered to the fact that if you want to survive in Neverland, you have to serve the whims of its king.</p><p class="p1">Hook brings her supplies. Tink brings the supplies to the boy. Neither of them mention anything about it, do so wordlessly, but every time Tink returns, there is heavy gratitude in his eyes that she almost can’t bear to look at.</p><p class="p1">Gratitude, it turns out, can seem a lot like belief in the wrong light.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Baelfire,” says the boy the third time Tink helps him. “My name, it’s Baelfire.”</p><p class="p1">His eyes are bright but they could have been brighter. His young face has his lips curved upwards but it could be wider.</p><p class="p1">Her own heart might be blackening, she might not be a fairy anymore, but she won’t deny this boy a smile.</p><p class="p1">“I’m Tinker Bell,” she says warmly. “But you can call me Tink.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Neverland is supposed to be a self-imposed exile. It is supposed to be the prison of the wingless fairy no one believes in anymore.</p><p class="p1">Baelfire, barely a teenager, grins and shares stories of his village, leaving out less savory parts but she can see the unspoken words in his weary eyes.</p><p class="p1">Hook, leather-clad pirate, tells her exaggerated tales of how he supposedly fought of all manner of beasts, makes up new constellations with her while they look at Neverland’s stars.</p><p class="p1">Both draw portraits of her; she wonders if either of them knows the other one shares a talent for art. If they don’t, she doesn’t tell them. She hides the drawings because if she displays them her treehouse might start looking like what it is not.</p><p class="p1">Beneficial arrangements, as it happens, can look a lot like <em>friends</em> in the wrong light.</p><p class="p1">Good thing that no one is looking. No one except Pan, supervising his island, no doubt cataloging this weakness to use if he so pleases.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Scars are scattered across her skin like shapes in the stars.</p><p class="p1">On her left arm, there’s a long jagged one that stretches from her wrist to her elbow. It was an accident. Tink had forgotten that she didn’t have wings when she jumped from a height that never used to be a problem for her before.</p><p class="p1">There’s thin, translucent ones littered all over her arms, her wrists, her legs—the branches of Neverland, scraping against her.</p><p class="p1">And then there are the two big angry lines on her back. Wing scars. Every fairy has them, visible when they don’t have their wings out. Her wings are gone, but the scars remain.</p><p class="p1">Not every scar has a story, and there are many, racked up while her years in Neverland increase in number, but not all of them from there.</p><p class="p1">She wonders about Hook, if he remembers all the stories of his brilliant stars, countless scars.</p><p class="p1">But really, she knows that he’s like her. There are merely too many to recall.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">A morning breeze tours the jungle making the flowers and leaves dance with rhythm. Harmless, to one not familiar with Neverland’s deadly plants.</p><p class="p1">A mark on his cheek. “Scratched with the wrong hand,” Hook tells her flippantly when she asks about it. There is surprise in his eyes, and it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.</p><p class="p1">He is right. Why would Tink inquire after something so personal from a man she won’t call by his real name? Why would Tink show an interest in someone she only pursues when she feels bored and alone?</p><p class="p1">“You forget that I’ve seen you naked,” she says, a remark that would earn a leery look and innuendo if this were a different conversation. The Tinker Bell of old would never have let these stories go untold. The Tinker Bell of old is gone and good riddance to her, but Tink still wonders. “Those marks on your back, do you expect me to believe they were inflicted by the hook as well?”</p><p class="p1">She has connected the dots of the constellations on his back, crisscrossed and delibate lines.</p><p class="p1">He blinks, taken aback, but covers it quickly with a grin. “Careful, Lady Bell, or a poor pirate might start to think you’re interested in him beyond his…physical capabilities.”</p><p class="p1">She scoffs because she’s not. She can’t. “<em>Poor</em> pirate? Hardly.”</p><p class="p1">An evening breeze tours the jungle. A crew member of the Jolly Roger has been lost to one of Neverland’s poisons, hidden in seemingly harmless flowers and leaves.</p><p class="p1">He comes to her wanting to hide his sorrow with bodies pressing against each other. For the first time, she says no.</p><p class="p1">He doesn’t leave.</p><p class="p1">He speaks, eventually, but not of his lost crew member. “When I was a boy, my father sold me and my brother into servitude.”</p><p class="p1">She blinks, processing that. The fairy in her protests at the injustice and cruelty. She squashes it down. Listens.</p><p class="p1">He gestures to his cheek. “Punched by the quartermaster whose rings cut open my flesh. I was eleven.” He gestures to his back. “Whipped when I disobeyed. I was a teenager, then.” Bitter wryness. “And I disobeyed quite often.”</p><p class="p1">She can picture it. A boy with wind-swept hair, oceans in his eyes, salt in his bones. Angry and defiant at the world.</p><p class="p1">She gestures to her own back. “Scars my wings left me.”</p><p class="p1">He doesn’t know the story of how she lost them. Since they’re being personal tonight, it’s only fair.</p><p class="p1">“There was a woman. She was deeply unhappy, and I risked my…everything, to try and give her a happy ending. It’s what fairies do. I thought it would all be worth it when she’d choose the happiness I offered her. She chose to pursue revenge instead.”</p><p class="p1">He shifts at that, intimately familiar with that particular desire.</p><p class="p1">“Because of her, I lost my wings. My magic. My home.” She smiles because if she doesn’t, she worries she might let the tears pricking her eyes fall. And that won’t do at all. “My belief in the world.”</p><p class="p1">“And in yourself,” he adds gently, eyes knowing.</p><p class="p1">Tears fall, then, but neither of them comment on it, falling asleep under the strange stars.</p><p class="p1">They never speak of that evening again, never let it show that they know each other quite more than a pirate and former fairy who are shagging for the sake of it <em>should</em> know.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Hook leaves when Pan grants him passage, off to enact his precious revenge. It may sate his being, but it’s not a happy ending. Tink tells herself she doesn’t care about others getting happy endings anymore.</p><p class="p1">Tink tells herself a lot of things.</p><p class="p1">Baelfire leaves when he finds a way, off to return to a land without magic.</p><p class="p1">“I let him leave,” Pan gloats to her when Bae’s gone under the assumption of having pulled one over on the king of Neverland.</p><p class="p1">“Why?”</p><p class="p1">He tuts and sighs like she’s an unruly child. “Oh, Tinker Bell. Such things don’t concern you, I’m afraid.”</p><p class="p1">Hook and Baelfire are gone, and Tink is alone with her vengeful dreams and the untold stories on her skin.</p><p class="p1">Pan is right.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Regina’s heart is dark and heavy in Tink’s hands.</p><p class="p1">She refuses to crush it.</p><p class="p1">The Tinker Bell of old was never fully gone. She just needed to be called out of hiding.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Belief from others can be seen under a wrong light. Belief in herself doesn’t need any light to be recognized.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Below her, the shimmering novas of city lights while she flies once again. Above her, the stars.</p><p class="p1">They wink at her.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p>
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